Columnist

Sydney's parents will surely sleep better this weekend knowing their pre-loaded children staggering up the "golden mile" of Kings Cross have got John Ibrahim watching their backs.

The normally secretive and taciturn "colourful Sydney identity" has been positively loquacious the last few weeks in the lead up to the city's new lock out laws, which saw the booze stop pouring in Ibrahim's many nightclubs at 3am today.

"I don't like to elaborate on my private business."

Amusingly dubbed an "entertainment maven" in the weekend's papers, Ibrahim has thrust himself forward as the unofficial spokesman for Sydney's new "CBD entertainment precinct" where 1.30am lock-outs and a three o'clock swill are now in force.

While the effectiveness of the new laws has been questioned by many people with far more reputable credentials than "Teflon John", the uncritical presentation of his opinions on subjects such as alcohol and drug consumption, violence and youth culture prompted one senior drug squad detective to email me yesterday saying: "I feel sick".

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Ibrahim or "Sexy" has he's known to members of the financial press, was quoted in The Australian Financial Review Saturday saying "self-interest is not the key motivator" for his new volubility, but concern for the well-being of the young punters to whom he sells ten dollar beers.

"I genuinely believe we have a duty of care to keep customers safe - violence is bad for business," Ibrahim told The AFR, while remaining steadfastly opaque about what his line-of-work actually is.

"I don't like to elaborate on my private business," said Ibrahim, joining the small list of people interviewed by our country's preeminent financial newspaper who talked about everything but how they make money.

Sydney hasn't earned the nickname "Sin City" because of its citizen's unerring moral compass but, even by our erratic standards, the rehabilitation of Ibrahim as Kings Cross's voice of prudence is a moral inversion of magnificent proportions.

It's a funny old world we live in where you can read a profile about Ibrahim and be told "he's distinctively handsome, almost mesmerisingly so, with tight coffee-gold coloured skin" and not that he's been the subject of more police scrutiny than the NSW drug squad's Christmas party bar bill.

I guess we all have a past, eh?

That said, few of us have had a series of the Underbelly television franchise devoted to our tender years, as has Ibrahim.

In the chronology of air-dates, Ibrahim's story fell between the heroin dealer and the brothel madam. What do they say about the company you keep?

In another recent front page interview with the eastern suburbs local newspaper The Wentworth Courier, Ibrahim was featured holding a correctly-spelt, handwritten sign, he'd tweeted stating: "Alcohol-fuelled violence is not cool".

This begs the question how the violence provoked by the buying and/or distribution of ice, ecstasy, cocaine, ketamine, heroin, steroids and human growth hormones around the Cross of which he's "King" would be viewed by the devoted teetolaler?

As a journalist, I understand it's a good "get" to land an interview with Ibrahim but it's even more impressive any interrogator can hold a straight face while a man who once boasted a bulletproof Bentley and travels with a bodyguard, sermonises about violence.

Having watched on at least a dozen occasions while said bodyguard/driver parks in a no-stopping zone in Bondi with the car's motor running and Ibrahim gets his hair blow-dried, it would seem he's either time poor or paranoid about the hazards of his profession ... whatever that may be.

If it actually is owning nightclubs it makes one all the more respectful of Sydney's other nightlife impresarios - such as Justin Hemmes, Fraser Short and David Evans - and their cavalier attitude to personal security.

Ibrahim opined in The Courier that young people need to "police themselves and call their mates out when they do something stupid" which sounds like an awesome blueprint to apply to his own, violence and crime-plagued brothers, Sam, Michael and Fadi. It's unclear, however, how such an attitude would mesh with another recent Ibrahim pronouncement, that police need to adopt an approach of "zero tolerance on idiots".

I guess we'll just have to wait for the interview with Woman's Day to find out.